The definition of clickbait includes a spammy title crafted at luring viewers into clicking on the link, followed by some rubbish piece of news. This campaign manages to alter the meaning of clickbait, offering us a genius campaign.

The Wild Detectives, a bookstore in Dallas, Texas, had a brilliant idea how to attract people back to reading, and to showcase the magic of stories behind the books. So, they took advantage of people’s natural tendency to fall for clickbait, and tricked people to read more books and stories. The campaign, named #Litbaits and the corresponding Facebook page – became an overnight success.

The concept behind the execution is very simple; create Facebook posts that are based on classic literature, but tweak the headlines to by using clickbaiting techniques. The visitor is tricked into following the link, and is then redirected to the excerpt of the story, taken straight from the book.

Some of the very convincing and extremely inappropriate titles include, “Teenage girl tricked boyfriend into killing himself” or “British guy dies after selfie gone wrong” or ”This Italian politician makes Trump look like a saint.” All titles, rather misleading portmanteaus for Romeo and Juliet, The Picture of Dorian Grey and The Prince by Machiavelli, respectively.

According to the stats released by the bookstore, the campaign drove a 14,000% rise in web traffic, and a 150% increase in page post engagement. Well played!

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Villy is a Digital Strategist. Villy studied Computers, Networks and Communications Engineering. She defines herself as an infinite pool of useless information, varying from astrophysics and biogenetics to modern art and football tactics.